McCorkle was born in Berkeley, California. She studied modern languages at the University of California, Berkeley. McCorkle began singing professionally after hearing recordings of Billie Holiday in Paris in the late 1960s. She nearly became an interpreter at the European Commission in Brussels, but moved instead to London in 1972 to pursue a career in singing. While in the UK, she made two albums which, although well received, enjoyed only limited circulation.
In the late 1970s, McCorkle returned to the United States and settled in New York City, where a five-month engagement at the Cookery in Greenwich Village brought her to wider public attention and elicited rave reviews from critics.
During the 1980s, McCorkle continued to record; her maturing style and the darkening timbre of her voice greatly enhanced her performances. In the early 1990s, two of the albums McCorkle made for Concord Records, No More Blues and Sábia, were enormously successful and made her name known to the wider world. She was recorded by the Smithsonian Institution which at the time made her the youngest singer ever to have been included in its popular music series. McCorkle played Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher and Alice Tully Halls five times and Carnegie Hall three times, and was featured soloist with Skitch Henderson and the 80-piece New York Pops in a concert of Brazilian music.
Thanks to her linguistic skills, McCorkle translated lyrics of Brazilian, French, and Italian songs, notably those for her Brazilian album Sabia. McCorkle also had several short stories published and, in 1991, began work on her first novel. She published fiction in Mademoiselle, Cosmopolitan Magazine, and non-fiction in the New York Times Magazine and in American Heritage, including lengthy articles on Ethel Waters, Bessie Smith, Irving Berlin and Mae West.
McCorkle suffered for many years from depression and cancer, and took her own life at age 55 by leaping off the balcony of her highrise Manhattan apartment. She was alone in her home at the time. The police immediately entered her home after identifying her body and found no foul play. Suicide was ruled the cause of death.
You Do Something To Me
Susannah McCorkle Lyrics
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Something that simply mystifies me
Tell me, why should it be
You have the power to hypnotize me?
Let me live 'neath your spell
Do do that voodoo that you do so well
Cause you do something to me
You do something to me
Something that simply mystifies me
Tell me, why should it be
You got the power to hypnotize me?
Let me live 'neath your spell
Do do that voodoo that you do so well
Cause you do something to me
That nobody else can do
That no one else in the world can do
The lyrics to Susannah McCorkle's song "You Do Something To Me" are about the intense feeling of being drawn towards someone. The singer is completely captivated by this person, and they cannot understand why. They are mystified by the power that this person has over them, and they are begging to be kept under their spell. The singer is entranced by this person's ability to hypnotize them and wants to remain there forever.
The repetition of the phrase "You do something to me" emphasizes the intensity of the singer's feelings towards this person. They acknowledge that nobody else has ever been able to affect them in the same way, and they are helpless in the face of this person's power. The lyric "Do do that voodoo that you do so well" is a metaphorical plea to the person to cast their spell and take the singer deeper into their hold.
Overall, the lyrics to "You Do Something To Me" evoke a sense of complete surrender to the power of attraction. The singer cannot resist this person and is willing to be hypnotized by them entirely. The song's simple melody underscores the idea that the singer is completely captured by the hypnotic power of this person.
Line by Line Meaning
You do something to me
There's something about you that affects me in a way that I can't quite explain.
Something that simply mystifies me
It's a feeling that I can't fully understand or put into words.
Tell me, why should it be
I'm curious as to why I'm so entranced by you.
You have the power to hypnotize me?
Your influence over me is so strong that it's like you're putting me under a spell.
Let me live 'neath your spell
I want to be consumed by my feelings for you and be under your control.
Do do that voodoo that you do so well
I want you to continue doing whatever it is that makes me feel this way.
Cause you do something to me
You have an effect on me that I can't ignore or resist.
That nobody else could do
There's no one else in the world who has the ability to make me feel this way.
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